Nigerian ruling-party candidate Bola Tinubu held an early lead in the race to become the next president, with results from Saturday’s vote tallied in more than a third of the West African nation’s three dozen states.
(Bloomberg) — Nigerian ruling-party candidate Bola Tinubu held an early lead in the race to become the next president, with results from Saturday’s vote tallied in more than a third of the West African nation’s three dozen states.
Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress won seven states, compared with four for Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, according to results released Tuesday by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Outsider Peter Obi of the Labour Party secured the most support in Lagos, the country’s commercial center, and two other states, while the opposition New Nigeria Peoples Party won in the northern state of Kano.
The winner will be decided by garniering the majority of votes and more than 25% of ballots in at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states and the federal capital territory of Abuja. The electoral commission is scheduled to announce its next batch of results at 11 a.m. local time.
EU Observers Criticize Management of Results (Feb. 27, 10:20 a.m.)
Nigerian electoral authorities’ failure to operate a new results-management process as planned is heightening concerns about the presidential contest, a European Union observation mission said.
Severe delays uploading images of individual polling unit scores to an online portal run by INEC is “contributing to diminishing public trust and confidence” in the ongoing tabulation, the mission said in a statement in Abuja on Monday.
The agency rolled out an electronic tallying process nationally for the first time in Saturday’s vote. The supposedly real-time updates were introduced to complement the manual count INEC uses to declare the winners. As of 10.20 a.m. on Tuesday, only 45% of results from Nigeria’s almost 177,000 polling units had been uploaded.
Call for Probe Into Allegations of Vote Infractions (Feb. 27, 8:16 a.m.)
The National Peace Committee, a non-governmental organization, urged the electoral authorities to investigate allegations of irregularities in the Feb. 25 election, which it said had a “rather rocky start” with problems around logistics and accreditation countrywide.
The group said it received reports of infractions including voter suppression through targeted violence, inducement of voters and “challenges” in using come of the equipment to conduct the election.
“We appeal to the security agencies to collaborate with INEC in their investigations of these weighty allegations,” it said in a statement on Monday. “Concerns about the failures of the INEC Result Viewing Portals across the country must be thoroughly investigated to ensure transparency.”
Results Trickle In (Feb. 27, 5:50 p.m.)
Nigerian Bonds Rally as Tinubu Leads (Feb. 27, 6:17 p.m.)
Nigerian bonds are posting some of the best gains in emerging markets as investors bet that Tinubu will introduce reforms to pull Africa’s largest economy out of a fiscal mess.
Five of the West African nation’s dollar bonds ranked among the 10 best performers on Monday in a Bloomberg index of 71 emerging and frontier nations. The country’s sovereign risk premium narrowed the most this year on Monday, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. data. The equity benchmark in Lagos rose to an eight-month high.
Nigeria’s bond due 2047 rose 1.8 cents on the dollar to 68.8, cutting its yield by 33 basis points to 11.5%.
–With assistance from Srinivasan Sivabalan, Colleen Goko and Kerim Karakaya.
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